1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, a consumable item management system and a computer readable medium.
2. Related Art
In image formation processing in an image forming apparatus represented by a printer or the like, print processing is performed by using print materials such as a photoreceptor, a toner, and the like. Because these materials are reduced or degraded according to the use thereof, they are consumable items which require maintenance.
Similarly to the image forming apparatus, with the advancement of technology, these consumable items are also updated to become new products, and the new products normally have upward compatibility. Accordingly, new-type consumable items can be attached to an image forming apparatus to which old-type consumable items are attached so that the image forming apparatus is used with the new-type consumable items attached thereto.
On the other hand, the consumable items require maintenance such as replacement or addition according to their use frequencies, and there is disclosed a technology in which, when the maintenance described above is performed, the replacement of the consumable items is performed without bringing the image forming apparatus into a stop state due to the lack of the consumable items by preliminarily carrying out a prediction of replacement of the consumable items, whereby convenience is enhanced.